I Have a Little List
Kevin Lima, director of Walt Disney Pictures Enchanted, in conversations with the media said he became obsessed with filling his updated fairytale with all manner of Disney icons. “There’re hundreds of them,” Lima said during an early November Sunday-morning press conference held at the Beverly Hills Hilton.
“It all started,” He told reporters, “with simple things like bringing in the apple (from Snow White). Happy Working Song happened late, and then I thought how about if we did this? But then I got obsessed with every single name in the movie that had to have a reference back to Disney.
“It was kinda like a disease at a certain point. My whole staff was like, ‘are you crazy?’ My production design staff thought I was nuts.”
Lima went on to say that some of the more “in your face” ones are things like the name of the restaurant where Robert (Patrick Dempsey) takes Giselle (Amy Adams) for dinner. It’s called the Bella Notte, from Lady and the Tramp.
The song Bella Notte is not used as part of the score for Enchanted. “I’d done that in 102 Dalmatians,” Lima said.
The name of the law firm that Robert works for is Churchill, Harlan, and Smith, which are the names of the three songwriters from Snow White. “It goes quite deep,” a smiling Lima said.
One princess to another, Amy Adams (left), with Jodi Benson (right)
the voice of Ariel from The Little Mermaid.
Enchanted ©Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved.
Photo Credit: BARRY WETCHER/SMPSP
Not all the iconic references are to Disney films. Lima was asked if a scene during the big production number, That’s How You Know, was intentionally modeled after a very similar scene from The Sound of Music in which Julie Andrews, singing the title song, runs up a hillside as the camera reveals the Austrian Alps behind her.
“That just happened,” Lima said. “Because on the day we wanted her to run up a hill and we shot this thing, ah, this looks like The Sound of Music. Okay, let’s just embrace it then. And the city becomes the Alps in the background. That was fun. Those things were fun when they come out.”
Lima also told reporters that he was often unaware of having recreated some classic Disney imagery.
“Narissa brings Giselle into the elevator and puts her on the floor, and then she pulls back her cape and reveals her asleep. And someone said to me, that’s just like the scene in Sleeping Beauty. Maleficent reveals Aurora sleeping on the floor. I didn’t even know I did it.
“I guess that’s what a lifetime of being involved with Disney gets ya.”
It also appears to get you a viral, Internet-based, virtual trivia game, as bloggers from coast to coast rush to document each and every in-joke contained in Enchanted. Despite Lima’s claim that “there’re hundreds of them,” producers Chris Chase and Barry Josephson place the total number of iconic moments closer to 150.
Whatever the final total, the chase is on to document them all, with open knowledgebase Wikipedia dedicating a portion of its Enchanted coverage to listing all of the film’s in-jokes.
While Lima claims that the idea to fill his film with hundreds of sight gags didn’t occur to him until Enchanted was well into production, it is the Disney studio that will ultimately benefit from his unintended Ultimate Easter Egg Hunt. Geeks and fan boys—not content with waiting for the DVD—eager to be the first to complete the list of iconic moments will have to pay to see the film again and again to realize their goal.
Something we don’t imagine will upset the Disney Company!
How to Goof Up Your Box Office
Keeping a movie at or near the top of the box office charts in the weeks following its debut has proven to be challenging this year, with many of last summer’s biggest hits dropping off precipitously after their opening weekend.
One way—besides being the beneficiary of an Internet egg hunt—to keep audiences coming back to see a movie again and again is to add something to the film’s program. Pixar has done this in the past by adding and rotating “outtakes” to the end credits for several of its films after they had been in theatres a few weeks.
Before Enchanted debuted last Wednesday, it had been widely reported—including by this website—that the highly anticipated animated short film Goofy: How to Hook Up Your Home Theatre was expected to screen with it. That didn't happen now two schools of thought have emerged regarding the Goofy short.
©Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved.
The first suggests that How to Hook Up Your Home Theatre was pulled at the last minute to run instead with the second installment of Disney’s National Treasure franchise. National Treasure: Book of Secrets is due to hit theatres on December 21. The thinking here being that the family-friendly, action adventure will give the Mouse’s new animated shorts program broader exposure among general movie-going audiences.
A second theory suggests that Disney studio marketers—realizing that hit films have had a hard time holding on to audiences this year—decided to hold off on pairing How to Hook Up Your Home Theatre with Enchanted until it had been in theatres for at least two weeks. The idea being that the Goofy short might then entice new and returning viewers to the modern day Manhattan fairy tale.
Walt Disney Pictures’ representatives were unable to comment one way or another regarding Goofy’s pairing or release date. They have promised to let us know as soon as they know anything definite.
With or without Goofy, Kevin Lima’s Easter Egg-filled journey from Andalassia and back again gives every appearance of being able to continue to fill multiplexes at least through the remainder of the continuing holiday season.
